spensions,
and chromatic intervals, a tendency to conceal superficial form rather
than to emphasise it, and so forth. Yet it is a curious question
whether if Handel, say, could have heard an overture of Wagner's he
would have thought it an advance in beauty or not--whether it would
have seemed to him like the realisation of some incredible dream, a
heavenly music, or whether he would have thought it licentious, and
even shapeless. Of course, one knows that there is going to be
development in art, but the imagination is unable to forecast it,
except in so far as it can forecast a possibility of an increased
perfection of technique. It is the same with painting. It is a
bewildering speculation what Raffaelle or Michelangelo would have
thought of the work of Turner or Millais: whether they would have been
delighted by the subtle evolution of their own aims, or confused by the
increase of impressional suggestiveness--whether, indeed, if Raffaelle
or Michelangelo had seen a large photograph, say, of a winter scene, or
a chromo-lithograph such as appears as a supplement to an illustrated
paper, they might not have flung down their brush in a mixture of
rapture and despair.

There is the same difficulty when we come to literature. What would
Chaucer or Spenser have thought of Browning or Swinburne? Would such
poetry have seemed to them like an inspired product of art, or a
delirious torrent of unintelligible verbiage? Of course, they would not
have understood the language, to begin with; and the thought, the
interfusion of philosophy, the new problems, would have been absolutely
incomprehensible. Probably if one could have questioned Spenser, he
would have felt that the last word had probably been said in poetry,
and would not have been able to conceive of its development in any
direction.

The great genius who is also effective is generally the man who is not
very far ahead of his age, but just a little ahead of it--who foresees
not the remote possibilities of artistic development, but just the
increased amount of colour and quality which the received forms can
bear, and which are consequently likely to be acceptable to people of
artistic perceptions. If a Tennyson had lived in the time of Pope, he
would doubtless have used the heroic couplet faithfully, and put into
it just a small increase of melody, a slightly more graceful play of
thought, a finer observation of natural things--but he probably would
not have strayed be